Pavel Seviarynets: We Will Walk Across Free Belarus

Belarusians have "grown up" a lot in the last five and a half years.

In an interview with "Zerkalo" ex-political prisoner, one of the leaders of the Belarusian opposition, co-founder of the Belarusian Christian Democracy (BCD) party Pavel Seviarynets told what has changed during the five years he spent behind bars.

How do you feel these few weeks in freedom, after such a long sentence?

- Coming out was like being born again. There was an unfamiliar world around, painful, incomprehensible.

- We were taken for 24 hours with a bag on our heads. Me - from Grodno (before his release Pavel was in prison No. 1 in this city. - Editor's note), across the whole of Belarus. At first I even thought that they were taking me to Russia, because the sun was visible through the sack - so we were going to the east.

And then we saw Ukraine. We drove through Chernigov, saw the destroyed buildings, listened to the air alarm at night, went down to the bomb shelter every night. "Shaheds" were flying, one was shot down three hundred meters from the hotel. You can feel that people live in a state of war. I've only seen such things in movies.

So, yes, along with the air of freedom - a new, painful world.

In my opinion, people have grown a lot during these five and a half years, which I haven't seen in Belarus on the outside. For example, in terms of solidarity: we arrived, and there are dozens of organizations, initiatives and hundreds of people ready to help. I don't remember such a level of solidarity. The absolute majority of Belarusians know that we are the people who should preserve our language and culture, who should preserve our land - what was given by God.

At the same time there is a feeling of separation. We are here, we have been exported - in fact, exporting people [as a commodity] to the European Union. And Belarus is a separate world. People clear their browsers after every time they go online for news. They expect to be visited today, or tomorrow, or the day after tomorrow. In a concentrated form it is felt in prison. There, at any moment it can "fly", you can find yourself in a detention center, sent to a stage, absolutely unexpectedly.

I think God prepared, formed, educated [us] for a new situation, for what will be after. The world is changing very fast and becoming more and more violent. And in due time, if God gives it, we will wait and walk through free Belarus, breathing freely, hugging our relatives and friends. But for now we need to prepare, to wait, to mature for this moment.

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